Month: July 2009

Uncategorized

Orestes Brownson and Pierre Leroux

July 25, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur
Pierre Leroux was the other half, along with P.-J. Proudhon, of the mutualist mix, as formulated by William B. Greene. Greene was introduced to Leroux’s work by Orestes A. Brownson, and adopted a number of Brownson’s criticisms of Leroux’s works. Greene’s first major writings were, in fact, attempts to come to terms with the thought of Leroux and Brownson. From this perspective, Brownson’s most important works were a review of Leroux’s Humanity and “The Mediatorial Life of Jesus,” both from 1842 – and they’re both available now in Corvus Editions. If you want to understand Greene’s mutualism, or want another […]
Corvus Distribution

Benjamin R. Tucker and Gertrude B. Kelly on Education

July 21, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur
It’s a rare pleasure these days to stumble on something by Benjamin R. Tucker that I didn’t know was out there to find. When these items surface, it usually means some obscure radical journal or paper has surfaced. In this case, however, the source was the decidedly mainstream Educational Review, which dedicated half an issue in 1898 to “Some Socialist and Anarchist Views on Education.” Two of the contributors were political candidates of the Socialistic Labor Party, but the other two were figures familiar to readers of Tucker’s Liberty: Tucker himself and Dr. Gertrude B. Kelly. For the details, download […]
Anarchism

JUSTICE: Program – Conclusion

July 19, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Justice in the Revolution and in the Church, Volume I, “Program,” section XIII. § XIII. — CONCLUSION The papacy having been broken, Catholicism is brought low: there is no more religion in the civilized world. The Protestant churches, a sort of middle term between religious thought and philosophical thought, that remained in opposition to the Roman Church, perish in their turn, obliged as they will be either to decisively adopt philosophy, and consequently to consummate their abjuration, or to undergo a restoration of unity, and consequently to contradict themselves. Eclecticism itself no longer has any raison d’être; of […]
Anarchism

JUSTICE: A word about the situation

July 19, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Justice in the Revolution and in the Church, Volume I, “Program,” section XII. § XII. — A word about the situation. It is by their principles, religious or philosophical, that societies live. Before 89, France was Christian: its monarchy was of divine right, its economic constitution established on feudality. Christian, monarchical and feudal, the French nation could be said to be as well disciplined in its thought as it was in its government. She had principles, doctrines, a tradition, a morals; she had rights. Under Louis XIV it arrived, using its principles, at the highest degree of power […]
Corvus Distribution

Taking Wing: Games We Can’t Win

July 19, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur
It is often said, in justification of the opportunities for monopoly, which our present business arrangements afford, that it is an encouragement to enterprise; and, that without such encouragement, all men would become drones and idlers.—Joshua King Ingalls, “Competition.” The model of competition that presently has us in its grip really comes pretty close to to that “inhuman struggle for the mastery, which characterizes all grades of business, under existing social conditions,” of which Ingalls complains. Aside from the obvious big-fish-eaten-by-bigger-fish stuff that is playing out in so many areas of business, at the level of the firm, one of […]
Uncategorized

on alliance

July 17, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur
After weeks of increasingly bellicose agreement on the importance of truth, reason and LGBT rights to the left-libertarian movement, I’ve decided to withdraw my formal affiliations with the Alliance of the Libertarian Left. The ALL was launched initially despite considerable diversity of basic assumptions about theory, strategy and tactics–a dangerous strategy, in many ways, but one which grew naturally, it seems to me, out of the network of friendships, political flirtations, and relations of philosophical hospitality that preceded the ALL, on SEK3 original left-libertarian list and in Tom Knapp’s Blogosphere of the Libertarian Left. The growth and success of the […]
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Add it up

July 15, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur
I was listening to a local, very mainstream news broadcast last night, and the report was that, while Oregon’s unemployment rate was 12.2%, well above the national average, the underemployment rate was something like 23%. Now, as far as I can ascertain, the actual jobless rate seems to run at least twice as high as the rate of those collecting benefits (a rate which, depending on who is citing it, may or may not include those on the “extended benefits” currently available.) And those total jobless estimates, which frequently run closer to three times the “unemployment rate,” don’t count those […]
Uncategorized

Lose this skin…

July 14, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur
As of this afternoon, I’ve struck the ALL flag, seceded and moved my yurt to more open left-libertarian territory. It won’t make a lick of difference to my friends and those with whom I am engaged in actual projects, but it feels necessary to me. My “document for discussion” on hospitality and the ALLiance can be taken as my thoughts on how small-a alliance might be conducted. I’ve actually been contemplating the change for some time, as a means of avoiding any sort of mis/representation issues, as my own theoretical work is likely to be increasingly controversial in some ALLiance […]
mutualism

JUSTICE: Law of Progress

July 13, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Justice in the Revolution and in the Church, Volume I, “Program,” section XI. § XI. — Law of progress: Social destination. An objection is posed.—If the center or pivot of philosophy, namely Justice, is, like that of being, invariable and fixed, the system of things, which, in fact and in right, rests on that center, must also be defined in itself, and consequently fixed in its ensemble and tending to immutability. Leibnitz regarded this world as the best possible; he should have said, in virtue of the law of equilibrium that presides over it, that it is the […]
mutualism

JUSTICE: Conditions for a philosophical propaganda

July 13, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Justice in the Revolution and in the Church, Volume I, “Program,” section X. § X. — Conditions for a philosophical propaganda. It is when religions pass away, when monarchies fail, when the politics of exploitation is reduced, in order to preserve itself, to proscribing the worker and the idea, and when the republic, everywhere on the agenda, seeks its formula; at the hour when the old convictions are dilapidated, when consciences are routed, when opinion is abandoned, when the multitude of egoisms shouts Every man for himself! that the moment arrives for an attempt at social restoration by […]